Open Sourcing Shopify Polaris for Ember.js

Over the past year, the Smile team has adopted Shopify’s new Polaris UI framework to make Smile more cohesive and merchant-focused. Shopify Polaris has helped Smile and countless other product teams create simple and empowering experiences for Shopify merchants, and we are excited to help share this unique element of Shopify’s ecosystem with even more of the open source world.

Today we're excited to release an Ember.js add-on to make Shopify Polaris available to more product teams.

"Polaris components previously available in React are now available for Ember.js developers."

At Smile, we strongly believe in the open source framework as an enabler of building great products with small teams. Today we're introducing a library of components that were previously only available for React that will bridge the utility of Shopify Polaris to the Ember community. From forms to typography to layout and a series of other common UI elements, our Ember components are fully documented and available for you to build experiences that have a cohesive look and feel.

Why we're open sourcing Polaris for Ember.js

Delivers a consistent experience for Shopify merchants

One of our greatest priorities has always been putting the merchant first. We think about the needs of different types of merchants, and are intentional about empathizing with everyone regardless of their size.

"From Shopify to Smile, merchants know they're being treated to an integrated, simple to run and manage experience that is second to none."

This value is enthusiastically shared by Shopify, who’s committed to delivering a cohesive experience to merchants no matter where they are in the product. By incorporating the Polaris approach into how we build our own experiences, we’re able to deliver the best possible experience for every single one of our Shopify merchants. From Shopify to Smile, merchants know they’re being treated to an integrated, simple to run and manage experience that is second to none.

We want to share this merchant-minded way of building products with the larger Ember.js community. By open sourcing Polaris for Ember.js, we want to empower other companies to consider the effects of their product design on their customers and create a technology ecosystem where the customer experience is always at the forefront.

Leverages the knowledge and principles of Shopify designers

In our opinion, Shopify is one of the best designed products because they’re able to strike the perfect balance between simplicity and empowerment. Regardless of whether you’re new to ecommerce or one of the biggest brands in the world, Shopify is simple enough to get you started and powerful enough to continue helping you achieve incredible growth.

"The Polaris framework helps us focus on our product without reinventing design, which has been extremely important to our success."

This is a characteristic that we’ve admired for years. With Polaris, we’re excited to work with and push forward tools that make these types of experiences and successes possible for everyone. Implementing the Polaris framework helps us focus on our product without reinventing design — a fact that has been supremely important in helping us succeed.

Build for merchants

One of Shopify’s driving principles is the desire to solve problems for merchants. This is what has influenced the way they designed and marketed their product, and they’ve built their design framework with these problems in mind.

"Using Polaris in our own design has helped us overcome a number of challenges that allowed us to build an experience that made us the world's most used loyalty platform."

As a Shopify partner, we’re working with many of the same merchants and as a result are faced with many of the same problems. Implementing Polaris into our own product design has allowed us to acknowledge and overcome a number of challenges, allowing us to build an experience that propelled us to becoming the world’s most used loyalty and gamification platform.

Sharing Polaris for Ember.js gives us the opportunity to help even more teams make their products accessible for merchants. This merchant-focused mindset is extremely important to us, and we want to help share this passion with other apps and technologies working in our shared ecommerce space. Sharing our wealth of experience and the proven success of Polaris will help create more merchant tools that focus on success and solving problems instead of creating new ones.

Building for success with Polaris and Ember.js

"Polaris for Ember.js allows us to pay it forward, boosting the availability of Polaris for teams that use Ember."

We see the benefits from leveraging open source software every single day and are excited to be able to contribute to this exciting community. We look forward to supporting the growth of the Shopify Polaris framework as it continues to evolve, and can’t wait to share this exciting opportunity with a new pocket of developers in the Ember.js world.